Part 12

"How many a giant project have I formed in secresy and solitude, when inspired alike by the ardour of youth and love, and here they end! Oh, Anna! dearly hath thy perfidy cost the heart that loved thee well."

He was often visited by Hepburn of Bolton, who, by Bothwell's directions, had him under his immediate guardianship; and, being a blunt and soldierly young man, whose heart had been as yet unseared by jealousy or disappointment, and then felt happy in the ideal love of his Mariette, to console the prisoner, brought now and then a staup of Rochelle under his mantle; and was wont to converse with him so winningly and frankly, that he learned the particulars of his story, and the errand which made him seek the Scottish shore.

"St. Bothan! but thou art a rare fellow, Master Konrad," said Bolton. "Loving this damsel, and yet labouring to restore her to the arms of a rival. Rare platonism--by the mass!"

"Sir, thou knowest not the pure sentiment of love that animated me. So refined was my passion for this fair being, that so far from being happy in possessing her, if she loved me not, I would have preferred to see her happiness increased by the love of a rival"----

"Mass! if I understand either this or thee," said the lieutenant of the archers, sipping his Rochelle with a face of perplexity. "But I pray Heaven I may never have reason to argue thus with myself! A blow from my poniard, or a bowshot at fifty paces, were worth a thousand such homilies."

"Oh, yes!" continued Konrad, clasping his hands; "my love, though deep, and passionate, and true, was divested of every sensual thought. I had schooled myself to joy when Anna rejoiced; to sorrow when Anna wept."

"I am no casuist," said Bolton; "but I think thou feedest thy imagination rather than thy love, which must die, as it is hopeless."

"It sought her happiness, not my own--and thus it cannot die."

The young Scottish knight could not perceive this altogether; but he admired Konrad without knowing why, and, to cheer his solitude, introduced to the same prison Sir James Tarbet, the old priest before mentioned, and who had still a few weeks of his term of captivity to endure--a captivity imposed on all who dared to celebrate mass, since it had been forbidden by law as an idolatrous ceremony, dedicated to the devil and scarlet woman.

This good man, who was now in his seventieth year, had served his country in his youth at the fields of Flodden, Solway Moss, and Pinkiecleugh, and, though bent by the infirmities of age and three spear-wounds, somewhat of the old bearing of the knight shone through the mild manner and chastened aspect of the Catholic priest; and in his eye and voice there were those mild and winning expressions, which the followers of Ignatius Loyola are said alone to acquire. His forehead was high, and his failing locks were thin. His magnificent beard, white as snow, lent a dignity to his aspect; and his figure had a stateliness, of which not even his tattered doublet of grey cloth, his hodden mantle, and ruffless shirt, could deprive it. And yet, though changed in aspect, the time had been, when, sheathed in bright armour, he had spurred his barbed horse through the thickest battalions of Surrey and Somerset; and, in the rich vestments of a canon of St. Giles, had held aloft the consecrated host on the great altar of that grand Cathedral, when the sance bell rang, the organ pealed through all its echoing aisles, and while thousands of Edina's best and bravest, her noblest and her greatest, knelt with bent knees and bowed heads on the pavement of the chancel, choir, and nave, before the glittering star of the upheld Eucharist.

By his manner, when bestowing upon him a silent benediction, Eonrad at once recognised a priest of the ancient church, and he kissed the old man's hand with fervour.

"For what art thou here, father?" he asked.

"For worshiping God as he has been worshipped since his son left the earth," replied the old man. "But now Scotland's apostate priests and unlettered barons have discovered, that the forms and prayers of fifteen centuries are idolatrous and superstitious, and severe laws are laid upon us. A gentleman pays a hundred pounds to the crown if he be discovered at mass; a yeoman forty for the first fault, and death for the second."

"I would then, father, that I were back in old Norway, and thou with me; for there we can worship God as we will."

Interested by the young man's gentle manner, Sir James Tarbet requested to be informed of the crime for which he suffered; and Konrad, who had but a confused idea of the chain of circumstances by which he was then a prisoner, attributed the whole to the malevolence of Bothwell; and when he concluded the history of his life and troubles--for to the aged canon he told every thing with confidence and hope, and without reservation--he mingled with it several threats of ultimate vengeance on the author of his long oppression, and Anna's wrongs.

"This must not be!" replied the priest. "By studying vengeance thou keepest open thine own wounds, and pourest salt into them, so that they never heal, or are forgotten. Forgive this sinful Earl, and thou conquerest him; forgive him for the sake of the sisterly love thou bearest this Lady Anna, who loves him so well. 'Be patient,' saith a wise Arabian, 'and the leaf of the mulberry-tree will become satin.' By avoiding misery, thou wilt find happiness; for misery tormenteth itself. O my son! if, like me, thou wert aged and insensible to every emotion save pity and compassion, thou wouldst know that the expectation of eternal happiness in the world that is to come, will raise one far above the petty strife and turmoil of this."

Konrad sighed, but made no reply.

"One virtue," continued the priest, "will counterbalance a hundred vices; and if the Earl of Bothwell--ha! thou knittest thy brow with wrath and hatred. Remember that he who cherisheth either, is like unto the fallen angels."

"I am but a mere man, father; and know that none would scorn me more for woman weakness than that proud noble, were I to say unto him--Earl Bothwell, I forgive thee!"

"Nay--bethink thee! he is most deserving of scorn who scorneth the humble; even as he is the weakest who oppresseth the weak."

"True it is, father!" exclaimed Konrad, striking together his fettered hands; "then here end all my visions of love and honour--my day-dreams of ambition and joy."

"Say not of joy, or to what purpose serve my exhortations?"

"Father," said Konrad; "I am very desolate and broken in spirit, and there are moments in my times of exceeding misery and depression, when I would willingly seek in the church for that refuge which our holy religion affords us; but I fear I am too much wedded to the world, and am too young for a sacrifice so serious."

"Say not so!" replied Sir James Tarbet, with animation, for at such a crisis of the Catholic church such sentiments were priceless to its upholders. "Youth lendeth additional grace to the practice of religion. Of this I will talk with thee more anon; and I trust that the day may come when I shall see thee hold aloft the blessed sacrament, on that holy altar which this infatuated people have prostrated for a time--I say, but for a time; for lo! again I see it rising phoenix-like from its ashes, in greater splendour than ever the middle ages saw!"

Fired by the energy of the priest, who seemed like something ethereal, as the noon-day sun streamed in a blaze of glory through the grated window on his kindling eyes and silver beard, and soothed by his manner and discourse, Konrad felt a new and hitherto unknown glow in his bosom, especially when the old man knelt down, saying--

"Pray with me, for this is the festival of Saint Edmund, the king and martyr; but, like many another consecrated day, it passes now in Scotland's hills and glens, unmarked by piety and prayer; for now, her sons can view with apathy the ruins of her altars, and the grass growing green in the aisles where their fathers prayed, and where their bones repose."

*CHAPTER XXII.*

*THE WHISPER.*

Thence rugged toil attends his mazy way, And misery marks him for her prey; _Sedition, envy, murder, passion, strife,_ Spread horror o'er his path of life; These to the hated mansion lead, Where cheerless age reclines his drooping head. _Sophocles._

The whisper of Hob of Ormiston had not been lost on the Earl; hourly it haunted him; he thought of it by day, he dreamt of it by night.

Amid the pleasures of the table, the noise of the midnight revel, the ceremonies of the court, the debates of the council, the solemnities of the church, in the glare of the noonday sun, and, worst of all, in the silence of the voiceless night, that fatal whisper was in his ear, and fanning the latent spark of hell that lay smouldering in his heart.

He deemed himself predestined to accomplish that terrible advice; but still his soul recoiled within itself, and even the ardour of his love for Mary, and his hatred of her husband, were stifled for a time at the terrible contemplation. Life lost its pleasures--power and feudal splendour their zest; his employments were neglected; his attire, usually so magnificent, was never as it used to be--for a change had come over him, and that change was apparent to all. Mary could perceive that, at times, a dusky fire filled his dark and gloomy eyes, and then she immediately shunned their gaze. His brow had become pale and veined, and marked by thought and care. The gentle queen pitied him; and when compelled to address him (for he was still her most distinguished courtier), she did so with a kindness and reserve that only added fuel to the secret flame that preyed upon the Earl's heart.

The coldness, separation, and unconcealed dislike between Mary and King Henry still continued, and they were, to all appearance, irreconcilable; till he, after running headlong on a frightful career of luxury and mad riot at Glasgow, where he was residing at his father's mansion of Limmerfield, was seized with a deadly fever, which ended in that dreadful and loathsome disease, the smallpox, then very prevalent in the west country. And now, when prostrated in all his energies, abandoned by friends and foes, by the panders, and jockies, and boon companions among whom he had squandered his health and wealth, his own peace and the peace of his queen and wife--she nobly was the _first_ who flew to his succour.

With a small train she departed in haste to the infant capital of the west; and Bothwell, who, with all his love, could not accompany her on such a visit, (though he admired her the more for it,) accompanied by Ormiston and Bolton, set out for the house of Whittinghame, a stately fortalice in his constabulary of Haddington, and belonging to Archibald Douglas, a kinsman and adherent of the Earl of Morton.

By a strange coincidence, rather than a mutual compact, many other peers and barons who were hostile to the house of Lennox and its heir, were then also visiting the intriguing lord of Whittinghame; and, like several rills uniting in a river, the whole current of their conversation, thoughts, and sentiments, were bent on the destruction of the Stuarts of Lennox, either by secret and Machiavelian fraud, or in the good old Scottish fashion, with the displayed banner and uplifted spear.

The darkness of a winter night had closed over the keep and woods of Whittinghame; there was no snow on the ground, but as the sky was starless the gloom was intense. Sheet-lightning at times illumined the far horizon, and brought forward strong in relief from the lurid background, the black and towering cones of Gulane hill and Berwick's lofty law--that landmark of the German sea--but all was still, and not a branch stirring in the leafless woods, when silently and noiselessly, all well armed, masked, and muffled in their mantles, the guests of the lord of Whittinghame assembled under the sepulchral shadow of a great and venerable yew-tree, that still stands near the castle wall, and is pointed out to the curious as the scene of their meeting.

Thick and impervious, the yew cast its umbrageous shade above them, and formed a fitting canopy for such a conclave of darkness and desperation; and heavily the chill dew dripped from the pendant branches.

There were present four peers and several of the lesser barons; Argyle, the proud but wavering Huntly, and Morton, cool and determined, and Bothwell, now the arch conspirator and Cataline of the conclave, with knit brows and clenched hands; a bloodless cheek, and lips compressed and pallid; a tongue that trembled alternately between the very load of eloquence that oppressed it, and the darkness of the purpose to which that dangerous eloquence was directed.

How little did some of these conspirators divine the other sentiment, so wild and guilty, that was making public utility an excuse for regicide; and that filled with an agony, almost amounting to suffocation, the breast of Scotland's greatest earl.

Near him stood his friend and evil mentor, that double-tongued master of intrigue and prince of plotters, Maitland the secretary, with his broad and massive brow, so high, so pale, and intellectual, his eagle eye and thin lips; and black Ormiston, the muscular and strong, whose qualities were those of the body only--the iron baron of his time, unscrupulous and bloodthirsty; from childhood inured to rapine, strife, and slaughter; while Bolton, the young and handsome, inspired to seek all the vengeance that rivalry and scorned love could prompt, was by turns as fierce as Morton, as politic and cruel as Maitland, as sullen as Argyle.

And there in whispers, under that old sepulchral yew, was debated and resolved on that deed of treason, of darkness, and of horror, that from Scotland's capital was to send forth an echo over Europe--an echo that would never die--the murder of King Henry, as a fool and tyrant, who had rendered himself intolerable to the people. What passed is unknown, for history has failed to record it; and not even the voluminous rolls of Magister Absalom Beyer can supply the blank, save in one instance. Ormiston, with a treachery at which we blush in a Scottish baron, proposed that the Norwegian prisoner in Holyrood might easily be made a valuable tool in the affair; and that, by some adroitness, the whole blame of the projected assassination might be thrown upon him. This motion, which exactly suited his own ideas and taste, was warmly applauded by the Earl of Morton, and agreed to by the others, who cared not a jot about the matter.

The die was cast--the deed resolved on.

Then from beneath his mantle, the learned knight of Pittendriech, the Lord President of the supreme court, (a man still famous for his works on Scottish law,) drew forth a parchment, written and prepared with more than legal accuracy, and more than wolfish cruelty, by which they each and all bound themselves to stand by each other, in weal or woe, in victory or triumph, in defeat and death, with tower and vassal, life and limb; and to this bond they each in succession placed their seals and marks, or signatures; and feebly fell the light of a flickering taper on their pale visages and fierce eyes, as they appended their dishonoured titles to that Draconian deed, which the pale secretary received, and put up in his secret pocket, with such a smile as Satan would have done the assignment of their souls.[*]

[*] Mr. Carte, from a letter of Monsieur de Fenelon, 5th January, 1574, acquaints us, that Ormiston confessed that the Earl of Bothwell shewed him a paper subscribed by the Earls of Argyle, Huntly, and Morton, Sir James Balfour, and Secretary Maitland, promising him assistance in murdering the king. Various other authors give us proofs of the existence of the document.--See _Goodal_, vol. i.

Now with some precipitation they all prepared to separate.

"Farewell, laird of Whittinghame!" said Bothwell, as he leaped upon his horse, feeling that the probable excitement of a hard gallop would be a relief from his own thoughts, or more congenial with their impetuosity; "and farewell, my lords and gentlemen! Now for the bloody game, and Scotland be thou my chess-board of battle! There shall I make knights and queens, and rooks and pawns, to move at my will, and to vanish when I list. Mount, Ormiston! and ho--for Edinburgh!"

*CHAPTER XXIII.*

*THE MOTHER AND HER CHILD.*

_Victorian_. Let me hear thy voice, and I am happy; For every tone, like some secret incantation, Calls up the buried past to plead for me-- Speak my beloved--speak onto my heart, Whatever fills and agitates thine own. _The Spanish Student, Act III._

With the dogged resolution of one who neither will nor knows how to swerve from a purpose, Bothwell, with Ormiston and Bolton, laid their plans with Morton and others for the accomplishment of their terrible compact.

Any qualms the Earl had, were nearly stifled by the intelligence of Mary's complete reconciliation with her husband, for whom all her natural tenderness, as the first love and choice of her heart, returned; and, notwithstanding the loathly and disfiguring disease under which he laboured, and the great personal risk incurred by herself, like a "ministering angel" she hung over the sick-bed of the repentant profligate, who frequently implored her pardon and forgiveness--and in tears poor Mary blessed and forgave him.

Exaggerated tidings of these passages fired the fierce soul of the Earl with jealousy and wrath, at what he deemed the mere caprice of a pretty woman; but the gage had been thrown to fate, and a cloud was gathering over Mary's thorny crown, which as yet she neither saw nor felt.

His youth, and the natural strength of his constitution, enabled the young king to surmount that disease which had baffled the skill of Maitre Picauet, the half quack, half astrologer leech, who attended him; and, as soon as he was convalescent, the queen had him conveyed in a soft litter, by easy stages, to the capital, hoping that by the luxuries procurable there, the purity of the air, and better attendance, he might be fully restored to health and to her.

Upon this the conspirators, still alive to their intentions, sent the Lord President of the College of Justice to make offer of an ancient mansion that was situated on rising ground to the southward of Edinburgh, exposed to the pure breeze beyond the city walls, from the woods of the burgh-muir, and the beautiful sheet of water which they bordered. The unsuspecting Mary gratefully accepted the courteous offer, and there the poor young king was conveyed to----die.

This house belonged to the Lord President's brother, Robert Balfour, Provost of "the Collegiate Kirk of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the Fields." It had long been uninhabited; and was situated, says Buchanan, in a lonesome and solitary place, between the ruins of two churches, "where no noise or outcry could be heard." It stood without the city walls, on the site now occupied by Drummond Street.

Small, ancient, and massive, it was probably coeval with its church, which had been built in 1220 by Alexander II. Its front faced the west; and from thence a view from the windows extended over fields to the hamlet of Lauriston. Its northern gable was so close to the strong wall of the city, that its principal door was but one pace distant from an arched postern which is still discernible in the former, and was then flanked by a massive tower. To the westward lay the Kirk-of-Field, a great cross church with buttressed walls and pointed windows, for so it is shown in a print of 1544. To the eastward lay the ruins of the Dominican monastery, which had been burned down in 1528. Of these the fragment of a tower still survived, with an ancient gate, bearing in Saxon characters the same legend still remaining to this day in the wall of the Kirk-of-Field Wynd, which now bears another name--

Ave Maria, gratia plena Dominus Terum,

_i.e._, "Hail Mary! full with grace--the Lord be with you." On the south the fields extended to the spacious common muir of the city, which was shaded by many a Druid oak; and to the eastward the ground descended suddenly into the lonely valley at the foot of Salisbury craigs. To the north lay the long line of the city ramparts, with the barrier-portes of the Kirk-of-Field and Bristo, with their round arches flanked by strong towers, where the brass culverins scowled through deep embrasures, and the heads of Rizzio's minor murderers grinned on iron spikes.

The humble dwelling in which Mary's incaution and the conspirators' cunning had lodged the young king, was a two-storied house; a small corridor, having a room on each side, led to a tower behind, wherein (after the Scottish fashion) a circular stair gave access to the upper story, which contained but two apartments, corresponding with two on the ground floor.

Darnley occupied one; the queen had the chamber below, and beneath it were those vaults of which the conspirators made a use so fatal; on the south lay a spacious garden shaded by many venerable fruit-trees, which had been reared by prebendaries of St. Mary.

It was now the month of February, 1567.

Thaws, and the increasing heat of the sun, had dispelled the snow from moor and mountain side, though a little still lingered on the peaks of the beautiful Pentlands. The atmosphere was teeming with humid vapours, and the ice that had so long bound the loch of the city, had been dissipated, and once more the snowy swan and the sable coot floated on its azure bosom. The thatch on the cottage roofs of Lauriston was once again of emerald green, and the tufted grass began to droop, where for the past winter the icicle had hung.

Each morning, as he rose above Arthur's Seat, the sun shone more merrily on the barred windows of the close chamber where the sick king lay; and he heard the voices of the mavis and merle, as they sang on the dewy trees of the ancient orchard. A showery Candlemas-tide had come and gone, unmarked by ceremony or prayer; but old people congratulated each other on the prospect of a beautiful spring, as they repeated the ancient saw--

"Gif Candlemass is fair and clear, We'll hae twa winters in the year;"

and merrily the hoodie-crow cawed in the blue sky, and the sparrow twittered on the budding hedges, while the ploughman whistled on the rigs of Lauriston and St. Leonard, and urged through the teeming earth their old Scottish ploughs, that were drawn by four oxen, and had but one stilt, like those described by Virgil in his first Georgic.

Darnley was slowly recovering, and the young queen, animated perhaps more by pity than affection, still attended him with an assiduity that was no less remarkable than praiseworthy. One of his pages slept constantly in the chamber, and was ever at his call by day and by night; while Mary, when not attending the council at Holyrood, with a few attendants occupied the rooms below.

Many of the nobles came to the house daily, and Bothwell among them, making dutiful enquiries concerning the progress of the king's illness rather than his health; for many of them hoped he yet would die, and so save them from the guilty deed designed.

It was the evening of the 10th February, and every part of the plan for the accomplishment of the king's destruction was in progress: an opportunity alone was waited.